Curated category
Chemical elements
- NitrogenTwo technicians walked into a confined space inside the Space Shuttle's mobile launcher platform on the 19th of March 1981, shortly before the program's…
- OxygenOxygen makes up almost half of the Earth's crust, yet for most of human history nobody knew it existed. It carries the symbol O and the atomic number 8, a…
- EuropiumEuropium is the element hiding in plain sight inside your television screen, your banknotes, and the glow of a fluorescent light bulb.
- ChromiumChromium, element number 24 on the periodic table, carries a name borrowed from the ancient Greek word for color. That origin is no accident.
- NickelNickel, element 28 on the periodic table, takes its name from a mischievous sprite of German miner mythology. In the ore mountains of medieval Germany…
- DysprosiumDysprosium carries a name that doubles as a confession. Paul Emile Lecoq de Boisbaudran needed more than thirty attempts to pull it free from holmium oxide…
- MolybdenumMolybdenum carries a name that is, in a sense, a mistake. It comes from the Ancient Greek word molybdos, meaning lead, because for centuries its dark ores…
- ZincZinc is the only metal that appears in every single enzyme class in the human body. That one fact hints at how deeply this element is woven into the fabric…
- BerkeliumBerkelium sits at atomic number 97 on the periodic table, a soft, silvery-white metal that glows faintly with radioactivity and exists nowhere in nature.
- ZirconiumZirconium sits at atomic number 40 on the periodic table, carrying a symbol - Zr - that hints at the Persian word zargun, meaning "gold-like" or "as gold."…
- CadmiumCadmium hides in plain sight. Atomic number 48 on the periodic table, it sits quietly alongside zinc and mercury in group 12, a soft silvery-white metal that…
- CeriumCerium sits at atomic number 58 on the periodic table, a soft, silvery-white metal that most people have never heard of.
- PotassiumPotassium is a metal that can be sliced with a kitchen knife. Drop a piece into water and it bursts into a lilac-colored flame.
- TerbiumTerbium, element 65 on the periodic table, lights up your living room, guides submarines through the ocean, and was discovered by accident inside a batch of…
- TitaniumTitanium is a metal that quietly surrounds us everywhere, yet most people have no idea they are touching it dozens of times a day.
- YtterbiumYtterbium takes its name from a village in Sweden called Ytterby, a place so rich in rare-earth elements that it lent its name to four separate entries on…
- AluminiumAluminium is the most abundant metal in the Earth's crust, making up 8.23% of it by mass, yet for most of human history no one had ever seen a piece of it.
- LeadLead carries the chemical symbol Pb, drawn from the Latin word plumbum, and it sits at atomic number 82 on the periodic table.
- IndiumIndium is so soft that you can bite into it with your teeth. Rub it on paper and it leaves a line, just like a pencil. Bend a piece and it cries out, a…
- LanthanumLanthanum carries a name that is a confession. It comes from the ancient Greek lanthanein, meaning 'to lie hidden'. The Swedish chemist Carl Gustaf Mosander…
- NiobiumNiobium sits quietly in the periodic table at atomic number 41, carrying two names, a century of mistaken identity, and a reach that extends from the steel…
- PlatinumPlatinum sits at atomic number 78 on the periodic table, but its story stretches back to pre-Columbian South America, where native peoples worked it into…
- PraseodymiumPraseodymium gets its name from two Ancient Greek words: prasinos, meaning 'leek-green', and didymos, meaning 'twin'. The leek-green half describes its salts.
- CaliforniumCalifornium is a silvery-white metal that can be cut with an ordinary kitchen knife, yet a single microgram of its most common isotope releases 2.3 million…
- UraniumUranium sits at atomic number 92, the heaviest element that forms naturally on Earth in significant quantities. On the 6th of August 1945, a device called…
- HeliumHelium hid inside sunlight before anyone found it on Earth. On the 18th of August 1868, during a total solar eclipse seen from Guntur, India, the French…
- ManganeseManganese, the chemical element with the symbol Mn and atomic number 25, sits quietly inside almost every can of soda and every batch of stainless steel, yet…
- Mercury (element)Mercury is the only metallic element known to be liquid at standard temperature and pressure. Cool it below 4 K and it became the first known superconductor…
- HydrogenHydrogen carries the symbol H and the atomic number 1, the very first entry in the catalogue of the elements. It is the lightest of them all, and the most…
- BerylliumBeryllium carries atomic number 4, making it one of the lightest solid metals on the periodic table, yet it is strong enough to be used in the mirrors of the…
- ArgonArgon makes up nearly one percent of the air you are breathing right now. Symbol Ar, atomic number 18, it sits quietly in group 18 of the periodic table…
- ArsenicArsenic carries the atomic number 33 and the chemical symbol As, but those tidy facts barely hint at the element's long, strange relationship with humanity.
- CobaltCobalt sits at atomic number 27 on the periodic table, but its story begins not in a laboratory, but in a German silver mine where frustrated miners blamed a…
- AmericiumAmericium sits inside roughly 900 million smoke detectors worldwide, keeping watch in kitchens and hallways with a barely visible speck of radioactive metal.
- BariumBarium is a chemical element carrying the symbol Ba and atomic number 56, and its story begins not in a laboratory but in a volcanic field near Bologna…
- ErbiumErbium sits at atomic number 68 on the periodic table, a silvery-white metal that almost nobody encounters in its pure form.
- NeodymiumNeodymium, element number 60 on the periodic table, sits quietly inside the headphones on your ears, the hard drive in your computer, and the electric motor…
- RutheniumRuthenium sits at atomic number 44 on the periodic table, carrying the symbol Ru. In 1844, Karl Ernst Claus, a Russian scientist of Baltic-German ancestry…
- ScandiumScandium sits at atomic number 21 on the periodic table, carrying the symbol Sc and a reputation that defies its abundance.
- SeleniumSelenium sits at atomic number 34 on the periodic table, but it refuses to behave like a single, predictable substance. Depending on how it cools, it can…
- VanadiumVanadium sits at atomic number 23 on the periodic table, carrying the symbol V and a history that spans two centuries of false starts, stolen credit, and…
- YttriumYttrium sits on the periodic table with symbol Y and atomic number 39, but its story begins not in a laboratory, but in a Swedish quarry.
- EinsteiniumEinsteinium, element 99 on the periodic table, was born in the fire of history's most destructive weapon. On the 1st of November 1952, the United States…
- IronIron sits in the periodic table as element 26, symbol Fe, a metal of the first transition series and group 8. By mass it is the most common element on the…
- SilverSilver carries the chemical symbol Ag and the atomic number 47. That symbol comes from argentum, the Latin word for the metal, and it hides a small mystery.
- GadoliniumGadolinium hides a paradox inside a hospital scanner. At body temperature, this silvery-white metal exhibits the greatest paramagnetic effect of any element.
- CalciumCalcium surrounds us in ways most people never think about. Symbol Ca, atomic number 20, it makes up roughly 3% of the Earth's crust, making it the fifth…
- MagnesiumBurning magnesium reaches a temperature of roughly 3,100 degrees Celsius, and it throws off a brilliant white light rich in ultraviolet wavelengths.
- PalladiumPalladium, the silvery-white metal with atomic number 46, carries a name born from astronomical discovery. When the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston…
- RhodiumRhodium carries the symbol Rh and the atomic number 45, and it holds the distinction of being among the rarest and most valuable metals on Earth.